Apple has decided to pay up for an allegedly stolen clock design in its latest iOS 6 mobile operating system.

IOS 6, which was released last month only days ahead of the iPhone 5, featured a new clock design for the iPad that seemed pretty basic. Just a white face with black, rectangular notches representing the numbers, black hour/minute hands and a red seconds hand. No big deal, right?

Wrong. The iOS 6 clock was nearly identical to a clock design developed by a railway company in Switzerland called Swiss Federal Railways (SBB). SBB said its company created that clock design back in 1944.

SBB's clock [left] and Apple's iOS 6 clock design (right)

[Image Source: IBN Live]

When SBB became aware of the stolen design, it immediately contacted Apple in hopes of some sort of licensing agreement.

"We are proud that this icon of clock design is being used by a globally successful company," said Reto Kormann, SBB spokesperson. "We've approached Apple and told them that the rights for this clock belong to us."

It's interesting to see Apple on the losing end of a copyright infringement claim; especially after the hell it has put Samsung through over mobile patent lawsuits. After a lengthy battle with Samsung around the globe, a U.S. jury found Samsung guilty of copying the iPhone/iPad for its Galaxy line. Not only was Samsung ordered to pay $1.05 billion USD in damages, but a court date on December 6 may lead to more product bans for the South Korean electronics maker. Apple is also looking to boost that $1.05 billion fine to $3 billion.

Apple's use of ARM in the Newton, 1993, was directly related to their funding the creation of the modern ARM processor in 1990.

You also seem to discount the Newton, despite the fact that it was in fact 1) One of the first PDAs, 2) The Psion 3, a real PDA, was only released in 1991 a scant two years before the Newton, 3) The Newton formfactor was in fact the archetype for the Palm Pilot, iPhone, and all modern slate style devices.

Apple was ONE of the investors not the only investor, also you're stretching quite a bit to imply that ARM is anywhere it is today cause of Apple, as I said before ARM has been doing business without Apple for a long time, if ARM was counting on Apple alone they would be long gone, their success is entirely due to their own expertise and have little to do with Apple, sure Apple put some money in and used their core logic but so did others.

Scant 2 years? even if it was 1, it still makes the Psion 3 the first PDA and by a good margin, aren't you iTards bragging about the iPhone

quote: The Newton formfactor was in fact the archetype for the Palm Pilot, iPhone, and all modern slate style devices.

Key word SLATE, and they have been around from long before Apple, without joking you could see slate like devices on SciFi movies before 1993 and even books described such device... maybe Apple didn't invent anything after all and just copied the form factor from a movie.